Tells Yevseks to Differentiate Between Pre-soviet Peasants and Present Jewish Colonists

“The left-wingers should understand the difference between the old pre-revolutionary peasants and the new post-revolutionary Jewish colonists,” declared J. Merezhin, Jewish Communist leader, addressing a meeting of the Ozet, the society for settling the Jews on the land, called to discuss the question of collectivizing the Jewish colonies.

Replying to certain Jewish Communist leaders who doubt whether the collectivization of the Jewish colonies should be completed within this year as decided by the Comzet, the government department for settling the Jews on the land, Merezhin said that “the Comzet’s collectivization tempo will do less harm to the Jewish colonies than the present tendency of certain Jewish left-wingers who are anxious to liquidate the kulaks in the Jewish colonies as was done with the non-Jewish peasants.”

He pointed out that in the entire Cherson region there are perhaps three Jewish kulaks, but that despite that, “the Jewish Communists in Kalinindorf decided that nine percent of the people in the Kalinindorf region must submit 567 pud bread per family because they are kulaks. This left wing blindness resulted in the selling out of the property of those taxed, who were really only middle-class colonists and not kulaks. The same thing happened in the Jewish colonies of the Odessa region.”

Criticizing these acts as extremely silly, Merezhin explained that the feeling for private property is not strongly developed among the Jewish colonists because their property belongs to the government or foreign relief organizations which give credit to the Jewish colonists.

After cautioning the left wingers to distinguish carefully between the pre-revolutionary peasants and the post-revolutionary Jewish colonists, Merezhin declared that “Jewish colonization is a pure Soviet creation that was started after the Revolution along Soviet lines and under Soviet control. Hence those who think themselves left wingers in Jewish colonization work are actually denying the Soviet achievements,” he warned.

Speaking of the foreign Jewish relief, Merezhin pointed out that their contributions were steadily growing smaller. He said that while five years ago the contribution of the Soviet government to Jewish colonization work was less than that of the foreign organizations, it is now much greater than their contribution.

While emphasizing the importance of the foreign Jewish relief which contributes large sums in American money and American machinery, Merezhin explained that anything coming from the Agro-Joint is not relief but a loan to the Soviet government which will be repaid in American currency plus five percent interest at the end of 17 years.